1Charge Flows Introduction

Charge flows are used when you want to charge your customer. Depending on the payment method we then
decide if we can charge the customer directly or if we have to send out an e-mail, sms etc to collect
his payment details. How and when this happens can be decided in the Charge Flow Levels.

1.1Charge Flow Use Cases: Recurring Payments

Recurring payment is an interesting concept for customer loyalty and convenience. Especially in the e-commerce sector.
Charge Flow is a concept that can be used from your side if you sell goods and you want to control when
a client should be charged. In this case you are able to create a transaction over the API using the
token (see below for more details). The application is now trying to charge the
specified token. If this fails the charge flow process will make sure that your customer is contacted to update
the payment information which significantly reduces your workload to implement recurring processes.

Important

In case you want to sell subscriptions for digital goods have a look at our
subscription API that allows you to create, products and do all kinds of different
pricing and billing methods.

1.2Charge FLow Use Case: E-Mail Payment Links

You can use Charge Flows also for your call center / webshop integration whenever you do want to collect
payment information asynchronous. I. e. you want to send your customers an email that contains a
payment link out of your shop in order to not collect the payment informations directly on the phone. This has the great advantage for you
that you save transactions fees as MoTo transactions are more expensive and you are able to process payments with
all possible payment methods. Charge Flows will then automatically remind your customers depending on your charge flow levels (see below).

2Charge Flows and Charge Flow Levels

You have to first set up a charge flow and then associate the different levels to a charge flow. The charge flow
level define the process on how you want to charge the customer and if the charge fails how you want to retrieve t
the payment information from him.

2.1Different Ways How a Customer can be Charged

We offer you three ways on how you can possible charge the customer or retrieve the payment information
in case the charge fails or the payment information are not yet collected.

Using a Token: A token represents basically a reference to stored payment information inside the platform.
In case a customer has an valid associated token we can use the token to charge the customer directly.

Asynchronous Charge: Some Payment Methods allow you to charge the client without his interaction. All you need
is the relevant payment information (i. e. to send an invoice). In this case we can also charge the customer using
the present information.

Sending a Link: in case none of the mechanism above is working, a link is sent to the client. The link is pointing to the
payment page. There the customer can select any configured payment method and complete the transaction. How and when
this link is sent is defined in the Charge Flow Levels.

How this different ways of charging are applied is defined in the charge flow configuration.

2.2Token

A Token represents a reference to stored payment information. Have a look at the
Tokenization Documentation to find out how token can be used and applied to transactions.

2.3Create a Charge Flow

2.4Manage Charge Flow Levels

The charge flow levels come only into play when there is no or not a valid token and the asynchronous charge
was not possible. They determine how and when the transaction information are gathered.
As soon as the charge flow is created you can create a Charge Flow Level. In the Charge Flow Level
you can decide the Type which defines how the customer will be notified. Depending on the Type you do have
the possibility to provide additional settings.

You can create as many Charge Flow Levels as you want. While processing the charge flow all levels
are considered untill the merchant has successfully provided the payment information and the state of the
transaction is in the Fulfill state. The charge attempt is considered Failed once all the the charge
flow level are processed unsuccessfully.

2.5Charge Flow Selection Process

You have the option to create multiple charge flows for different occasions. You are able to assign
conditions under Space > Payment > Configuration > Conditions
on the different Charge Flows. To determine the Charge Flow configuration the following steps are taken:

The relevant charge flows are determined by applying all configured conditions.

The priority of the current level configuration is selected.

All level configuration of a particular flow are sorted ascending.

We choose the level configuration with the next higher priority as the one of the current level configuration.

Important

The priority indicates the sort order of the level configurations. A low value indicates that the level
configuration is executed before any level with a higher value. Any change to this value affects future
level configuration selections. This means if you change the priority the sort order will be assessed once
the next level is due.